Dozens arrested as Indigenous people lead mass Ecuador protests
Demonstrators are unhappy at the economic policies of the country’s conservative president and want fuel price hikes reversed.
Demonstrators are unhappy at the economic policies of the country’s conservative president and want fuel price hikes reversed.
People march in protest against the economic policies of conservative Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso, days after he raised fuel prices, in Guayaquil
By Vincent Ricci
Published On 26 Oct 2021
Quito, Ecuador – As dawn broke in the early hours of October 26, Ecuador’s Indigenous communities had already started the most recent “paro nacional”, or national shutdown in English, by bringing main transit arteries to a halt in the countryside to mark the beginning of a day of protest against a hike in fuel prices.
The demonstrators wanted to peacefully enter the heavily-fortified presidential palace, but metal fences and riot police blocked the streets leading to the building.
Indigenous and other social collectives have been demanding conservative President Guillermo Lasso reverse the spike in fuel costs announced last week.
“A few days ago, the president labelled me a destabiliser,” Leonidas Iza, the president of the Confederation Indigenous Nationalities, or CONAIE, told reporters.
“Ecuadorians do not have time for this: We’re all concerned about the economic issues.”
In a press briefing after demonstrations in Quito had ended, Interior Minister Alexandra Vela said the majority of demonstrations nationwide were peaceful on Tuesday, but identified a group believed to have been aggressive against riot police resulting in agents firing tear gas in Santo Domingo Plaza to disperse the crowds.
Vela said 37 people were detained by police throughout the day.
CONAIE also announced seven resolutions following the day of protests, among them preparations for a second day of demonstrations and reiterated its demand that fuel prices be reduced to the levels they were in June.
Under pressure from CONAIE and Indigenous legislators, Lasso announced last week he was freezing the monthly increases of fuel prices, but fixed new prices slightly higher than those that had been expected to go into effect in October with petrol a fixed $2.55 a gallon ($0.67 a litre) and diesel $1.90 a gallon ($0.50 a litre)
[Vicente Gaibor del Pino/Reuters]
By Vincent Ricci
Published On 26 Oct 2021
Quito, Ecuador – As dawn broke in the early hours of October 26, Ecuador’s Indigenous communities had already started the most recent “paro nacional”, or national shutdown in English, by bringing main transit arteries to a halt in the countryside to mark the beginning of a day of protest against a hike in fuel prices.
The demonstrators wanted to peacefully enter the heavily-fortified presidential palace, but metal fences and riot police blocked the streets leading to the building.
Indigenous and other social collectives have been demanding conservative President Guillermo Lasso reverse the spike in fuel costs announced last week.
“A few days ago, the president labelled me a destabiliser,” Leonidas Iza, the president of the Confederation Indigenous Nationalities, or CONAIE, told reporters.
“Ecuadorians do not have time for this: We’re all concerned about the economic issues.”
In a press briefing after demonstrations in Quito had ended, Interior Minister Alexandra Vela said the majority of demonstrations nationwide were peaceful on Tuesday, but identified a group believed to have been aggressive against riot police resulting in agents firing tear gas in Santo Domingo Plaza to disperse the crowds.
Vela said 37 people were detained by police throughout the day.
CONAIE also announced seven resolutions following the day of protests, among them preparations for a second day of demonstrations and reiterated its demand that fuel prices be reduced to the levels they were in June.
Under pressure from CONAIE and Indigenous legislators, Lasso announced last week he was freezing the monthly increases of fuel prices, but fixed new prices slightly higher than those that had been expected to go into effect in October with petrol a fixed $2.55 a gallon ($0.67 a litre) and diesel $1.90 a gallon ($0.50 a litre)
.
Security forces stand guard as Indigenous people block the Pan-American Highway in Panzaleo, Cotopaxi Province, Ecuador, on October 26, 2021 [Rodrigo Buendia/ AFP]
“We have listened to you, the people, and also to political and social sectors to reach an agreement which brings us stability, in which the economy and grow and create jobs,” Lasso said in a message to the country Friday.
CONAIE rejected the president’s announcement and said protests would go forward as planned.
Now more than five months on the job, Lasso faces a migration crisis of Ecuadorians leaving for the US-Mexico border and a bloody gang war in the prison system.
With just days before the COP26 climate summit begins in Glasgow, environmentalists have also lambasted the president for committing to double Ecuador’s oil production during his term, setting up the prospect of a confrontation between remote Indigenous communities in the Amazon and state security forces
“We have listened to you, the people, and also to political and social sectors to reach an agreement which brings us stability, in which the economy and grow and create jobs,” Lasso said in a message to the country Friday.
CONAIE rejected the president’s announcement and said protests would go forward as planned.
Now more than five months on the job, Lasso faces a migration crisis of Ecuadorians leaving for the US-Mexico border and a bloody gang war in the prison system.
With just days before the COP26 climate summit begins in Glasgow, environmentalists have also lambasted the president for committing to double Ecuador’s oil production during his term, setting up the prospect of a confrontation between remote Indigenous communities in the Amazon and state security forces
.
An Indigenous woman looks over the scene at a roadblock in Ecuador’s center-Andean province Cotopaxi on October 26, 2021 [Juan Diego Montenegro/Al Jazeera]
Lasso did not appear in front of the legislative committee’s investigation on the Pandora Papers last week and has denied wrongdoing after being named in last month’s report. The national prosecutor’s office also launched a probe in Lasso’s offshore holdings.
With the intention to combat crime and drug-related violence, Lasso declared a 60-day state of emergency last Monday. The decree allows for the rapid deployment of the police and armed forces to conduct routine checkpoints in hotspots.
But organisations have condemned the move as an attempt to quell Tuesday’s planned demonstrations and shutdown
Lasso did not appear in front of the legislative committee’s investigation on the Pandora Papers last week and has denied wrongdoing after being named in last month’s report. The national prosecutor’s office also launched a probe in Lasso’s offshore holdings.
With the intention to combat crime and drug-related violence, Lasso declared a 60-day state of emergency last Monday. The decree allows for the rapid deployment of the police and armed forces to conduct routine checkpoints in hotspots.
But organisations have condemned the move as an attempt to quell Tuesday’s planned demonstrations and shutdown
.
Speaking to reporters in Quito on October 19, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken supported Lasso’s security declaration but said “these measures need to be taken pursuant to the Constitution.”
“[The measures] need to be very focused in what they’re seeking to achieve and finite in duration and … follow and proceed in a way that upholds democratic principles,” said Blinken during a three-day visit to Ecuador and its neighbour to the north, Colombia.
Tensions between Lasso and CONAIE have escalated for months and on October 4, a meeting at the presidential palace between the two sides resulted in a deadlock with no viable solution for bringing down fuel prices and oil exploration in Ecuador’s rainforest.
In October 2019, there was a 10-day nationwide shutdown after then-President Lenin Moreno implemented an austerity package that would have cut decades-old fuel subsidies.
Forced to backtrack by overwhelming social discontent, Moreno signed an executive decree allowing for gradual monthly increases in the price of fuel beginning in May 2020.
Lasso inherited the problem of fuel price rises, which has continued to shape Ecuador’s political, economic and social landscape.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
An apparent standoff between demonstrators and police in Panzaleo, Cotopaxi Province, Ecuador, on October 26, 2021, during a protest against the economic policies of the government
[Rodrigo Buendia/ AFP]
Speaking to reporters in Quito on October 19, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken supported Lasso’s security declaration but said “these measures need to be taken pursuant to the Constitution.”
“[The measures] need to be very focused in what they’re seeking to achieve and finite in duration and … follow and proceed in a way that upholds democratic principles,” said Blinken during a three-day visit to Ecuador and its neighbour to the north, Colombia.
Tensions between Lasso and CONAIE have escalated for months and on October 4, a meeting at the presidential palace between the two sides resulted in a deadlock with no viable solution for bringing down fuel prices and oil exploration in Ecuador’s rainforest.
In October 2019, there was a 10-day nationwide shutdown after then-President Lenin Moreno implemented an austerity package that would have cut decades-old fuel subsidies.
Forced to backtrack by overwhelming social discontent, Moreno signed an executive decree allowing for gradual monthly increases in the price of fuel beginning in May 2020.
Lasso inherited the problem of fuel price rises, which has continued to shape Ecuador’s political, economic and social landscape.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Paula Lopez and Santiago Piedra Silva, Paola Lopez and Santiago Piedra Silva
Tue, October 26, 2021
Indigenous Ecuadorans said they will protest for a second day Wednesday over soaring fuel prices, as the country grapples with a state of emergency and an ailing economy.
The nationwide protests -- the largest in the five months of conservative President Guillermo Lasso's administration -- were fueled by a 12 percent increase in fuel prices.
"We are going to continue to a second day of mobilization and resistance at the national level," said Leonidas Iza, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie).
At least 37 arrests have been made and five police officers wounded in the unrest, authorities said. Two soldiers who were captured by protesters in an Andean village were in good health.
Officials said about 1,500 indigenous people, students and workers marched Tuesday in the capital Quito, with the demonstration ending in clashes near the presidential palace between rock-throwing protesters and police, who responded by firing tear gas.
"This is the beginning of a progressive strike. Everything depends on the government, it must freeze fuel prices, reduce the cost of living," William Bastantes, a 48-year-old professor at the Central University, told AFP.
One young protester was injured on the forehead after being hit with a tear gas canister, according to an AFP journalist, while press freedom organization Fundamedios said a reporter had been hit in the leg by a rubber bullet fired by police.
"It was possible to control the demonstrations," tweeted Lasso, an ex-banker whose center-right economic policies are viewed with suspicion by many.
"This government guarantees the right to protest, when it is peaceful and occurs within the framework of the law," the 65-year-old added.
- 'Crushing our populations' -
The unrest comes as Ecuador battles economic collapse worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, widespread popular discontent, violent crime blamed on drug gangs, and corruption allegations against Lasso.
"I came for my three children, who have been unemployed since last year. They helped me to eat and we are all suffering, we are desperate," 58-year-old Maria Elena Ponce told AFP.
Protesters disrupted traffic in five of Ecuador's 24 provinces.
"We have collectively taken this decision (to protest) in the face of the new economic measures that are increasingly crushing our populations, our transport workers and our communities," protest organizer Julio Cesar Pilalumbo told AFP.
"We will resist and we will not give in to any repression," he said at a roadblock in Zumbahua in central Ecuador, where poncho-wearing protesters armed with spades and sticks joined others moving large stones to block traffic.
Fuel prices have nearly doubled since last year.
Last Friday, Lasso announced another price hike to $1.90 for a gallon (3.8 liters) of diesel -- up from $1 in 2020 -- and $2.55 for petrol.
He vowed it would be the last increase, but this was not enough to assuage anger with economic policy in a country that exports oil but imports much of the fuel it consumes.
Protesters under the umbrella of Conaie want the price capped at $1.50 for diesel and $2 for petrol.
Poverty affects about 47 percent of Ecuadorans; nearly a third do not have full-time work.
Teacher Fabiola Gualotuna, among the protesters in Zumbahua, said she felt let down by Lasso.
"He said he is going to raise teachers' salaries," she told AFP. "Some of us teachers... earn a pittance. It is not fair."
Lasso is facing a parliamentary investigation over Pandora Papers revelations that he allegedly hid millions in assets overseas.
- State of emergency -
Conaie is credited with helping topple three presidents between 1997 and 2005, and in 2019 led successful protests against the government's scrapping of fuel subsidies.
Indigenous people represent 7.4 percent of the country's 17.7 million inhabitants.
Lasso had declared a 60-day state of emergency last week to tackle rising crime and violence blamed on duelling drug traffickers in the country nestled between the world's two biggest cocaine producers: Colombia and Peru.
The state of emergency, decreed after some 240 gang-aligned inmates were killed in horrific prison clashes since January, allows for deployment of troops to help fight a crime wave that last week also claimed Ecuador's 200m sprint world bronze medalist Alex Quinonez in a shooting in Guayaquil.
pld-sp/rsr/dga/mlr/mlm/dva/jah
No comments:
Post a Comment